Since 1 January the VRT’s television channel één has be airing a series that chronicles the history of Flanders. 'Het verhaal van Vlaanderen' is one of the most lavish productions ever undertaken here. The programme is presented by one of our region’s most popular personalities Tom Waes. Using a mixture of narration, reconstruction and interviews the programme tells the story of the part of the world we now know as Flanders from pre-historic times to the present day.
Culture
The woman behind the costumes that tell “The Story of Flanders”
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The programme is popular, very popular in fact. The last episode got more than 1.6 million viewers that watched it either on TV or through the VRT’s on-demand and streaming service VRT Max.
One of the people that played a major role in making ‘Het verhaal van Vlaanderen’ such a great success is Raïssa Hans from Landen in Flemish Brabant.
Raïssa Hans: "A gigantic task"
Raïssa Hans told VRT News that a lot of research went into selecting the costums for the historical reconstruction scenes in the series. She enlisted the help of many friends and acquaintances and was also helped by the series’ make-up artist Ingeborg.
A total of between 600 and 700 costumes have been used for ‘The Story of Flanders’. Most came from a costume supplier in Spain.
"They have very many costumes and you can select what you need”.
"When a big film is being made, they help make the costumes for the extra. Afterwards the costumes are returned to their warehouse and as a result they have build up a stock of tens of thousands of items. 90% of what we used came from there and 10% we made ourselves”.
"I designed costumes for all ten episodes. These cover 37 different eras of history. It was a gigantic task”.
“Together with the producers we had to look everything up to check that it was historically correct”.
Ms Hans added that "I personally was under a lot of pressure. You want to do it well and not to disappoint anyone, because a lot of people are interested in history and there are a lot of re-enactors that know their period very well. We got a lot of help from them. This was particularly important with the Vikings and the Romans”
"Thanks to a good friend that does textile restoration, I had my own helpline. I asked her questions like what kind of weaving can I use, whether I can use linen and if so which texture. Another one of my best friends is an expert in uniforms and then there was our in-house archeologist and the professors that lent us their assistance. This was really needed when we covered pre-historic times”
"Judith of Flanders wore my favourite costume”
Raïssa Hans has her personal favourites among all the many costumes she selected for the series.
"My favourites are from the Middle Ages. Judith of Flanders’ costume we made ourselves from scratch. She lived in the early Middle Ages, so everything was all straight all block pattens and not much waistline”.
"What you above all need to know is what you can’t do, because then you can stop in time”.
Photograph from 1897 comes to lifeThe biggest challenge faced by Raïssa Hans and her team was bringing to life a photograph of the 1897 World Exhibition in Brussels. “We brought it to life to in the smallest details”.
The Story of Flanders (Het verhaal van Vlaanderen) is broadcast every Sunday evening at 8pm on Eén. The series can also be watched at any time of the day and night on VRT MAX.